EuroReference is an electronic publication used for sharing and promoting reference activities in the areas of Animal Health, Plant Health and Food and Drinking Water Safety at European level. The journal publishes contributions in the following fields:

• Regulatory aspects
• Collections of contaminants, pathogens, pests and harmful insects
• Evaluation of commercial diagnostic reagents
• Method development, set up and validation
• Research on new tests, strain characterisation, etc.
• Laboratory aspects of surveillance systems, including harmonisation of diagnostic methods, use of commercial versus in-house assays, microbiological surveillance networks, etc.

The journal is intended to facilitate the distribution of information among members of reference laboratory (or reference centre) networks and all interested stakeholders.
The targeted public includes scientists, engineers and technical staff of testing laboratories, reference laboratories in other Member States, national reference centres, relevant Ministries and other regulatory or standardisation bodies, as well as several operators such as animal health veterinarians, physicians or chemists involved in public health.
The topics that may be addressed in the journal essentially concern the scientific and technical aspects of analytical methods, how these methods fit into surveillance plans, and regulatory aspects of reference activities.

1) General instructions

The journal has only one main section: “Original or Review Papers”, with short letters (length limited to about 10 000 characters) or full papers with no size limitation. In addition there is an editorial and dispatches.
Articles and letters should be submitted in English (UK), should be well written and easy to understand.
Articles and letters should be previously reviewed for scientific content by at least two peers selected by the institution of origin of the corresponding author, one of them at least working for an external institution.
Articles should be sent via e-mail with any attached files to the following address: euroreference@anses.fr
Authors‘ affiliation should be given in the following order: [Acronym of the institution* – e.g. ANSES], [Entity – e.g. Plant Health Laboratory or Public Health Department], [Unit – if applicable], [Postcode and Town], [Country].
*The spelling of all contributing organisations is given in a specific list on the third cover page of the issue.
All acronyms and abbreviations used in the paper should be explained in the text the first time they appear. Symbols and units should comply with standard international conventions.
Articles and letters must have a title, authors’ affiliation (including e-mail address of the corresponding author) and an abstract of about 100 to 200 words (i.e. 600 -1,200 signs, all signs and spaces included) and a minimum of 5 key words and a maximum of 15. Key-words must belong to the MESH thesaurus of the NLM (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh).
Texts must be submitted as plain text with no formatting. They will then be formatted by the publishing team.
When corrections or modifications are suggested by reviewers, the corresponding member of the Editorial Team of the same institution submits the proposals and criticisms to the corresponding author and requests a modified version. The modified version may be submitted back to the corresponding member of the Editorial Team for final decision.
Finally the executive editor may propose to the corresponding author slight editorial modifications and English revisions. Corresponding author should answer to these last proposals and provide the final version of the article within a week.

Presentation of references:

In the text, references are named consecutively and put in round brackets with the surname of the first author and the publication year.
(Dupont, 2001)
(Dupont, 2001a) if several references from the same author and the same year
(Dupont and Durand, 2001)
(Dupont et al., 2001) if more than two authors
(Dupont, 2001; Durand, 2000) listed in alphabetical order
Dupont (2001) supports the idea that…

At the end of the article, the references are listed in alphabetical order in a section entitled ‘References’.
References should be presented in accordance with the following examples:
Article:
Cortiñas Abrahantes J, Bollaerts K, Aerts M, Ogunsanya V, Van der Stede Y. 2009. Salmonella serosurveillance: Different statistical methods to categorise pig herds based on serological data. Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 89(1-2): 59-66.
Book:
Baylis M, Mertens PPC, Mellor PS. 2008. Bluetongue. Academic Press, London, UK: 506 pp.
Book chapter:
Blanco Lavilla E, Sánchez-Vizcaíno JM. 2002. Application of assays based on foot-and-mouth disease non-structural proteins to epidemiological surveillance. In: Trends in emerging viral infections of swine, A Morilla, KJ Yoon, JJ Zimmerman Eds, Iowa State Press, Ames, Iowa, USA: 197-204.
Conference proceedings:
Zimuto SN, Nzombe PS, Dabula P, Ndlovu N, Maruta T. 2015. External Quality Assessment (EQA) / Proficiency Testing (PT) in Developing Countries in the Medical Laboratory Field. Eurachem 8th workshop Proficiency testing in analytical chemistry, microbiology and laboratory medicine, Berlin, Germany, 6-9 October 2015, 20-21.
Electronic sources:
Mc Kinley S, Levine M. Cubic spline interpolation. [consulted on 12 July 2009] http://online.redwoods.cc.ca.us/instruct/darnold/LAPROJ/Fall98/SkyMeg/Pr...

Illustrations and tables

Illustrations, figures and tables must be submitted as separate, high-quality (≥ 300 dpi) files (jpg or pdf format). All such documents must be referred to in the text and numbered in the order that they appear.
In the event that some illustrations have been created by third parties, whether they have already been published or not, authors must obtain all of the authorisations that they need to integrate these illustrations in their article(s) and to use them in this form. They must submit this proof of permission to reproduce with the manuscript.

2) Topics

The subjects addressed may concern the various aspects of reference activity, from purely scientific issues to topics related to public health, quality assurance, sociology, etc. It may include forward-looking studies, opinions and analyses of specific situations and experience that may be useful to reference authorities.
Articles and letters may deal primarily with regulatory, institutional (national or European) and technical aspects that are relevant to reference activities or laboratories.
A special interest is given to the activities of European Union reference laboratories (EURLs), in particular on their organisation, topical themes, international proficiency tests organized by EURLs, or unusual health events investigated at national or/and European levels.
The manuscripts submitted for publication may primarily concern aspects of translational research, and should therefore present the results of original studies that already apply to or may clearly apply to reference activities directly or that stem from reference activities, present new knowledge or underline recently acquired knowledge. They may for example show how research and reference progress go hand in hand or draw attention to unresolved issues. Substantiated manuscripts addressing research requirements in a specific reference domain, or the need for further validation of a test used for reference activity may be submitted.